Realism is concerned with the question of property. It is about the criteria of what properly belongs to a corpus and hence about that which frames and limits a system, a network, or a discourse. If realism is to be understood as a narrative which reconciles the "truth of life" with a "beautiful illusion", then the question of the essential and the inessential, the conscious and the unconscious, the work (ergon) and the embellishment (parergon), the subject and the abject of a text becomes the touchstone of the economy of realism as such.

This seminar invites discussions of realism (particularly, though not exclusively, in specific national incarnations) as it relates to questions of deviance: the relation of what seems to be redundant, excessive, perverse, or hysterical to the "proper" economy or metabolism of realist narration. What does the "realist" confrontation between normativity and abnormality, discipline and deviance entail? How do marginal national realisms conceive themselves against, imitate, and deviate from more "hegemonic" national realisms? What is the economy of a deviant realism? What happens to the reality principle in a deviant realism? What kind of cultural capital is involved in these negotiations, and how do they dovetail with or contribute to thematic treatments of deviance within the texts: sexual deviance, social, and political deviance?

Please submit your paper proposal (300-500 words) by 11/15/13 at:http://www.acla.org/submit/ and designate the "Deviant Realism(s)" seminar. If you are submitting after the deadline please send an email to ACLA at info@acla.org.